"I am vindicated," says Republican Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, who was ridiculed by environmentalists in 2003 when he declared that [catastrophic] man-made global warming was the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." He has reason to crow: His party's sweep of the midterm elections will bring into office almost four dozen new lawmakers (11 senators and at least 36 House members) who share his skepticism about climate change, according to ThinkProgress, an arm of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a Washington research group allied with Democrats. They join a smaller group of Republican incumbents, some of whom will assume powerful committee positions in January, who also reject that global warming is an immediate threat.

Their influence could be felt soon. When Obama Administration negotiators arrive in Cancun, Mexico, on Nov. 29 for 12 days of climate-change talks, they will no longer be able to claim that their policy agenda—to push for global action on climate change—has the full backing of Congress.

The day after the Nov. 2 elections, President Barack Obama acknowledged that the new balance of power requires him to scale back his environmental agenda. The President has all but scrapped plans for legislation that would require companies to buy and sell pollution allowances, a so-called cap-and-trade system. Even modest goals could be tough to realize. Republicans say they will seek to roll back Environmental Protection Agency rules, set to take effect in January, limiting carbon emissions, as well as restrictions on coal mining. They also may try to block billions of dollars in federal funds the Administration has directed to wind, solar, and other alternative sources, as well as electric-car technologies, areas Obama pitches as the manufacturing engines of the future.

Koko Warner is an American citizen who was selected to be a lead author of the next edition of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. For these purposes, it has been decided that she officially represents the country of Germany. [see p. 8 of this 27-page PDF]

Warner is one of at least four people assigned to work on the new IPCC report who is employed by an entity called the United Nations University. First and foremost, this institution exists to further “the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”

I can’t be the only one who finds this troubling. Scholarship is one thing. Scholarship sponsored and supervised by bureaucrats perched atop the world’s political org chart is surely another. Why does the United Nations feel the need to cultivate its own army of scholars? Of all the things in this messed up world on which the UN could be spending its money how can this be a priority?

Is it not also awkward that the IPCC – itself a UN body – thinks UN employees are the sort of experts who should be writing what is supposed to be a dispassionate climate change report? Is there no concern that the UN appears to be influencing the outcome? After all, in one chapter of the upcoming climate bible (Working Group 2′s Chapter 24) two of the 11 people responsible for writing it are affiliated with this university.

Many readers will already have been aware of this evolution in terminology. Having already been re-educated to talk about 'climate change' rather than 'global warming', we are now increasingly hearing the term 'global climate disruption'. In practice, 'climate change' is likely to remain the term in general use, but it is interesting to consider the motivation for these changes.

Since many scientists in the 1970s had been concerned at the prospect of global cooling (and rightly so, as the consequences of a transition to another Ice Age would be pretty serious), it was logical to talk instead of global warming as average temperatures began to creep up following a sudden jump in the mid-70s. The concept of changes wrought by an overall warmer climate was a simple one to grasp.

However, what became clear as climate scientists built their models and looked in more detail at what a warming world might mean was that there would be differences in the regional patterns of change and that temperatures would not simply be consistently higher. Although there was a consensus building in the scientific establishment that increasing carbon dioxide concentration would be the major driver of higher average temperatures, it was also clear that the global climate is highly complex and also subject to other influences.

It is impossible to predict how the current obsession with climate change will be seen in a hundred years’ time, but it arguably remains the defining issue of the early 21st Century. Despite the acres of newsprint and years of airtime devoted to the issue, the debate is notable for its sterility over recent years. Sceptics have been vilified by those representing the scientific and political orthodoxy and some have given back as good as they got. But the real betes noires of the establishment are the handful of their colleagues who dissent in any way. They are seen as traitors and are treated accordingly.

One such is Judith Curry of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology. She adheres to the mainstream view that climate change is at present primarily caused by burning fossil fuels and that the consequences are potentially very damaging. However, she has also tried to engage with sceptics, rather than dismissing all criticism and attacking the messenger. In particular, she has been criticised by colleagues for inviting prominent sceptics such as Steve McIntyre to her Institute. She sees this as a legitimate way to engage and win the argument; critics say this gives sceptics undue credibility.

Dr Curry now has her own blog (Climate Etc. at judithcurry.com). On this, she has recently posted Reversing the direction of the positive feedback loop and a follow-up piece. The concept of positive feedback is, of course, the basis for the entire edifice of current climate policy: the IPCC, the EU’s 2020 objectives, the lot. There is little concern about serious adverse effects from higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide unless the principle of positive feedback created by increased water vapour is invoked. It is this which leads to the headline figures of average temperatures rising 6C or more as CO2 levels rise. In this context, to use the term in relation to climate policy and politics, as Dr Curry does, is guaranteed to raise a few hackles.

The governor, a new darling of the Republican Party, made the remark at a town hall meeting he hosted in Toms River Tuesday afternoon.

Asked by a man attending the event whether he thought mankind was responsible for global warming, Christie says he's seen evidence on both sides of the argument but thinks it hasn't been proven one way or another.

WASHINGTON—An article appearing in the Los Angeles Times, and then picked up by media outlets far and wide, misrepresents the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and a climate science project the AGU is about to relaunch. The project, called Climate Q&A Service, aims simply to provide accurate scientific answers to questions from journalists about climate science.

“In contrast to what has been reported in the LA Times and elsewhere, there is no campaign by AGU against climate skeptics or congressional conservatives,” says Christine McEntee, Executive Director and CEO of the American Geophysical Union. “AGU will continue to provide accurate scientific information on Earth and space topics to inform the general public and to support sound public policy development.”

AGU is the world’s largest, not-for-profit, professional society of Earth and space scientists, with more than 58,000 members in over 135 countries.

“AGU is a scientific society, not an advocacy organization,” says climate scientist and AGU President Michael J. McPhaden. “The organization is committed to promoting scientific discovery and to disseminating to the scientific community, policy makers, the media, and the public, peer-reviewed scientific findings across a broad range of Earth and space sciences.”

Brad Johnson at The Wonk Room reports that about half of the Republican caucus in Congress, taking into account the results of the midterm elections, “now questions the scientific consensus that greenhouse pollution is a civilizational threat.”

According to Johnson, “45 of 97 Republican freshmen and 85 of 166 reelected Republicans are confirmed climate zombies. There are no Republican freshmen, in the House or Senate, who admit the science is real.”

At the same time, Johnson says there are only four Republicans in the House “who publicly admit that global warming pollution is real.”

What does this all mean? Well, at the end of the day it’s further evidence that, as I reported yesterday, it’s going to be an uphill battle in the Congress to pass significant energy legislation. While the House has already passed a climate bill and we’ve know for quite some time that cap-and-trade won’t pass the Senate any time soon, it seems more likely now that less controversial proposals — like a renewable energy standard and an oil spill response bill in the Senate — will face difficulty gaining enough votes for passage.

Judging by Obama’s remarks on compromise yesterday, it looks like lawmakers are going to start with the lowest-hanging fruit. Yesterday, I wrote about a number of issues where Republicans and Democrats may be able to find consensus on climate and energy.

WHATEVER HAPPENED to climate change? This time last year climate change was a hot topic regularly appearing in news bulletins and on front pages. Phrases such as “the future of humanity could be at stake” were quoted, celebrities marshalled and 4,000 journalists prepared to descend on the UN climate change summit in Copenhagen. Apparently humanity’s future is now secure… or so it might seem given the paucity of journalism devoted to the issue in the mainstream media.

Where did all the climate change stories go? “The [programmers] are against it because it loses ratings,” says a senior BBC journalist. “The wave [of public interest] has gone. There is climate change fatigue. That is why I am not [reporting] it now.”

Other journalists agree. Even reporters at The Guardian, which especially targets environmental reporting, complain that it’s difficult to get a run. Another UK broadcast journalist said he was warned that putting climate change on prime time would risk losing a million viewers.

In a series of interviews with some of the UK’s top specialist environment and science correspondents, I explored the changing climate for reporters covering global warming - as part of the ABC’s Donald McDonald research fellowship at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. Most of the journalists rated the media poorly on communicating what some have dubbed the epic news story of the century. “We have failed to engage the public,” said a broadcast journalist.